


All’s Fallow

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, I would describe the tone of this work as crepuscular
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27337972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Alls Fallow was the one day a year witches and warlocks stayed in bed-Wyrd Sisters
Relationships: Rufus Drumknott & Havelock Vetinari, Verence II/Magrat Garlick
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	All’s Fallow

_All’s Fallow was the one day a year witches and warlocks stayed in bed._

  
Granny Weatherwax listened to the wind roaring across the window and through the trees outside. Like every other night there was strife and death outside in the world, aches she could ease, but tonight she had to let them be.

The wind picked up, rattling the window in its frame. The comfort of the sound was that others would stay home tonight, that even the birds and bats she might borrow would be sheltering in their nests. It was easier to accept staying home if everyone else were not going to be running into each other and causing problems.

The sounds the cottage made amid the varying gale, the wind building up and settling down like waves against the edge of the ocean, were almost like a living thing, ancient timber beams creaking. Thatch withstood the mountain winds far better than tiles and shingles which were liable to be torn off one by one in a storm.

She had built up the fire but the temperature hovered on the edge of uncomfortably cold. Esme longed to look out through the eyes of another and see how the world was faring. It was a struggle every year. But if your steading could not stand up without you, it meant you were not doing your job properly. That was the point of All’s Fallow.

-

If all was proceeding well, there would not be any births in Lancre tonight. Obviously, other years this had not been the case. There were few midwives in the ramtops who were not witches, these days. This had not always been the case, but now witchcraft was popular—so popular that many of the girls had no interest in learning to deliver babies, which was fine, Gytha Ogg certainly would not seriously challenge Esme on that point, and the same consideration ought to extend to witches who were not arguably the strongest-willed person on the Disc.

It was worrying, Gytha thought, on nights like this, the notion that certain skills had gotten so bound up with witchcraft. The weave should be looser, more un-pickable, like stitches when you were first putting a garment together. Then, when you were sure you knew what you wanted, you could go back and make it stronger. Unless you were certain from the beginning, but that certainty had to come from yourself. Witchcraft should be more customizable than it was becoming and it should not take over the entirety of practices necessary to a society. If that continued it was going to cause problems.

Nanny Ogg poured herself a scumble nightcap. Still, it was nice, having a quiet night once in awhile.

-

Agnes Nitt worried about her understudy, who, according to her own strongly-worded complaints to the director, had not gotten enough rehearsal, and her understudy’s understudy, who had received her music late.

Perdita said she was being silly and the two other singers even sillier and that if they had not made enough time to practice their parts that was their own damn fault. They should be grateful for getting to go on for two of the best parts in the show.

But if their mistakes put everyone else off— Agnes thought.

Then that has nothing to do with us, Perdita countered.

Agnes worried about how much extra time the costumer had to spend making dresses since the three women were very different shapes to each other.

So what? She’s getting paid, isn’t she?

Agnes had to concede that Perdita had a point.

-

Queen Magrat watched King Verence II rocking the baby. His nervousness with the child was now closer to his general background nervousness than dread terror of getting it wrong.

Keeping up correspondence with the Long Lake Nac Mac Feegle was doing him good, she considered.

Magrat thought of the potions and medicines she had in progress and a half dozen ways they could be improved and reminded herself that there was value in stillness and contentment. She knew that she could protect her family. She knew how she fit into the story, witch and queen and warrior. And Magrat. Who wanted to go adjust the ingredients and decorations on vials and read three opinions on what knife she should use to chop fresh herbs. All of those things were important.

They had thick curtains pulled over the windows to muffle the wind and baby Esme had stopped crying.

-

Rufus Drumknott opened the door of the Rats Chamber. All that was visible inside was the faint gleam off the metal of the axe in the table and a shadow darker than the others.

“Are you just sitting here in the dark?”

There was no answer, so Rufus walked around the table. “It’s freezing down here, can you come upstairs?”

The Patrician, who could see better in the dark than most people, reached for his secretary’s hand. It was often this bad, the deep anguish, every thought a torment, relentless, like drowning out of sight of the silvery rainbow of the surface of the water, but expressing it was almost never an option, and having too much to do and not stopping helped. Stopping meant realizing how ineffectually you were running away.

-

Tiffany Aching’s family had taken it upon themselves to continually update her of what they were doing, which was about equally as helpful as it was stressful.

All’s Fallow was about trusting and letting go, which was hard to do when you were getting a steady stream of “We’ve brought all the lambs inside” and “there’s a huddle downwind of the hill in the pasture” and you felt like you were being asked to advise on every decision made and had to prevent yourself from doing so.

Eventually Tiffany’s mother asked her if she would rather not be informed of absolutely everything and she had said “Yes I would, thank you.” But then she started worrying that they were getting it wrong, that there were things she would notice that other people would miss.

Trusting and letting go, she reminded herself. Of course there were things she would notice that others wouldn’t, but she had to be okay with that.

You had to learn how to do nothing because rest was necessary and because delegation was important and because other people were competent and skilled and there are circumstances in which nothing is the right thing to do. Knowing how to go from doing everything to doing less to doing more took practice. And trust. And letting go.


End file.
